America's Scientific Elite Is Fueling China's Military Machine 

Scientists at U.S. Institutions continue to co-author thousands of papers with Chinese military researchers and China's defense-industrial base, despite growing efforts by the U.S.

Key points

• Included private and state universities in California and Nevada, Texas and New Mexico, Chicago and New Jersey.
• The congressional report contained a chart that purported to show that collaboration with Seven Sons institutions was at a high by 2025, with over 20 joint papers published.
• A total of 144 papers were published with Chinese defense state-owned enterprises, for example in space and aviation, electronics, and shipbuilding.
• There were 777 bilateral papers published over the same time frame at other PLA-affiliated entities such as military hospitals, medical academies, and army research institutes.
• On Monday, the Pentagon confirmed it would carry out research security audits at 30 leading U.S.

By Didi Kirsten Tatlow Senior Correspondent, International Affairs. Newsweek is a Trust Project member.

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For context, the collaborations include those with researchers at China's nuclear weapons development complex and two elite groups of military-affiliated schools known as the "Seven Sons of National Defense" and the "Seven Sons of Ordnance Industry, " as well as other People's Liberation Army institutions including medical ones and state-owned defense firms, the new data that tracks activity between January 2025 and the present indicates.

U.S. And Chinese researchers published a total of 3, 763 such co-authored papers over the last year and a half, according to Jeffrey Stoff, a leading research security investigator and the founder of the Center for Research Security and Integrity. This person compiled the up-to-date figures.

Notably, the numbers do not include papers by U.S. Scientists and Chinese military researchers that involved researchers from third countries, meaning they present a highly focused picture of U.S.-China collaboration. Adding third parties took the total to 5, 750.

For context, the data was raw so there were non-military applications to some of the research, especially in the medical field. Yet, "the vast majority of this is knowledge and technology transfer to enable the PLA to dominate in critical technologies, " Stoff remarked.

Ninety-nine papers were published over the last year and a half with researchers from the China Academy for Engineering Physics (CAEP,) China's nuclear weapons research and development institute that is a conglomerate of a dozen institutes headquartered in Mianyang in Sichuan Province, with lesser-known branches elsewhere in the country including in Beijing.

Stoff, a veteran researcher and Chinese linguist, drew on almost two decades of experience analyzing China's science and technology enterprise for the U.S. Administration including at the Department of War to construct a granular picture of the current situation.

Institutional affiliations can be opaque in China due to state information control that sharply reduces visibility. But Stoff managed to identify lesser-known institutes that are subdivisions of major outward-facing institutes to build a fuller picture. One example is the Beijing Computational Science Research Center, a subdivision of CAEP. The bibliographic data was drawn from the science publications database Dimensions.

Meanwhile, a total of 2, 620 papers were published bilaterally between the U.S. And Chinese researchers at the two "Seven Sons" school networks, a total of 12 universities that includes Beihang University in Beijing and the Harbin Institute of Technology in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang. Two universities appear on both lists.

Notably, the schools are significant contributors to China's military buildup, spanning fields where civilian research can additionally have military applications or so-called "dual-use technologies" including engineering, advanced materials, robotics, aerospace and semiconductors.

There were 777 bilateral papers published over the same time frame at other PLA-affiliated entities such as military hospitals, medical academies, and army research institutes. Key examples include the PLA General Hospital and the Academy of Military Medical Sciences.

Notably, a total of 144 papers were published with Chinese defense state-owned enterprises, for example in space and aviation, electronics, and shipbuilding. Key firms in this sector include the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST), China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (CETC), and China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC).

Research partners in the U.S. Included private and state universities in California and Nevada, Texas and New Mexico, Chicago and New Jersey.

For context, the joint research took place even as the U.S. Administration increasingly seeks to end the outflow of sensitive research to China, fearing it is losing its global leadership after decades of open bilateral cooperation and highly extensive knowledge and technology transfer.

Notably, the Pentagon has put new rules in place to nix its funding for U.S. Institutes that do research with Chinese counterparts that are on American administration "entity, " or sanctions lists.

According to Stoff has, those rules should apply more widely to federal funding.

On Monday, the Pentagon confirmed it would carry out research security audits at 30 leading U.S. Academic institutions to check compliance with the new rules around collaborations with what it termed "foreign entities of concern" in China, Russia and Iran.

Despite that growing effort, Collaboration continues extensively, remarked Stoff. As why else would they be continuing to collaborate with these highest-risk Chinese entities?, The data demonstrates universities have not taken national security seriously.

"One of the challenges is that the universities take a legalistic approach, " Stoff remarked. "Their main concern is compliance, not safeguarding national security and our innovation ecosystem. They will work with CAEP and the PLA unless it is explicitly outlawed."

Newsweek contacted the Pentagon for comment but did not hear back immediately.

In practice, the new data additionally comes as two congressional committees published an investigation accusing Harvard University of deferring to the interests of the Communist Party of China (CCP) in multiple ways, including by publishing increasing numbers of papers with the Seven Sons system.

Notably, the hard-hitting report out last week, Compromised Independence: CCP Influence at Harvard University, alleged Harvard indicated "deference to CCP interests overrides American economic, technological, and national security interests. This is not confined to a single individual, but instead pervasively corrupts the organization's integrity."

Harvard's policies and procedures did not meaningfully prevent CCP influence from affecting the entire organization including through research priorities and funding, it remarked.

Harvard informed Newsweek that it disagreed with the investigation's characterization of the university.

"Harvard shares the Committees' concern about geopolitical risks, including threats posed by the Chinese Communist Party, and is committed to continuing to conduct research and academic programming with protections that prioritize U.S. Interests and national security, " remarked spokesperson Sarah Kennedy-O'Reilly.

In practice, the congressional report contained a chart that purported to show that collaboration with Seven Sons institutions was at a high by 2025, with over 20 joint papers published.

Kennedy-O'Reilly did not respond to Newsweek questions regarding that, nor to another chart in the investigation that demonstrated that Harvard had received more funds from China than any other U.S. University. Second was New York University, according to the chart.

For now, america& #039; s Scientific Elite Is Fueling China& #039; s Military Machine remains the part of the story worth watching, and further updates are likely as more details are confirmed.